Whisper

by Tal Bauer

  The land was the very definition of austere. Dry desert, devoid of life, stretched for miles, until the plateau bumped into the White Mountains and the slopes of Tora Bora changed to craggy woods and scattered ferns. Even from a distance, the scars and craters of the battle in 2001 were visible, pockmarks on the land, empty of life.

  Beyond Tora Bora, Pakistan stretched into the horizon. The border separating the two countries was impossible to see, a line in the dust without marking, without signposts or fences. The peaks seemed to hover in the haze, scarred with sunlight, as if trying to escape the earth into the sky. In the afternoons, when the light burned onto the dead lands, the desiccated, war-ravaged earth, Kris thought the place looked a little like Hell would after the fires burned themselves out. Afghanistan still seemed that far away from the rest of the world.

  Life on base wasn’t terrible. He and David shared quarters, a privilege only given to married CIA officers. They had a cramped double bed shoved in the same size space as a single officer’s quarters, one nightstand, one desk that wobbled whenever it was looked at, and a fluorescent light strip with a dangling orange extension cord.

  Compared to being separated from David, it was paradise.

  They shared a bathroom with two other officers. The base had a gym crammed full with exercise equipment, donated by every fitness manufacturer in the States. The food was good, and the mess hall served a rotating selection of American favorites. Lobster and crab legs even showed up on the menu. There was nothing as strange to Kris as eating lobster with David by the light of their flashlight at two in the morning, their version of a date in Afghanistan.

  A CIA-run lounge served beer and wine, a luxury that the rest of the soldiers in Afghanistan couldn’t taste. Football, basketball, and baseball games were beamed live into the base via satellite.

  Kris commuted from his trailer quarters to the command center every day, a walk of three minutes. David, more days than not, dressed in traditional Afghan clothes and slipped out, driving a series of loops and switchbacks and changing cars and bicycles and even picking up a donkey, all to avoid being tracked. He, and sometimes others with him, would wander the border regions, crisscrossing into Pakistan and back into Afghanistan, scouting for tracks, hidden weapons, signs of the Taliban or al-Qaeda. He’d joined the CIA’s ultra-secretive counterterrorist pursuit teams, hunting on the ground to collect intelligence, and to capture or kill the CIA’s most wanted.

  They formed opposite sides of the spear. Kris with his drones, David with his clandestine infiltration on the ground. David sparred with shadows and ghosts, always looking over his shoulder, ever mindful of being discovered. Kris battled politics and whispers, a dizzying array of mixed priorities, and constant pressure from every part of the government. The Department of Defense, NATO Command in Kabul, Special Operations Command, and Ryan, each pulled Kris in different directions, wanting different operations, different actions.

  The CIA base was host to Special Forces and Delta operators, military royalty who were never told no, never questioned. Already against the CIA in principle and mocking them behind their back for being clowns, push-button jockeys, and children who hid on their bases, the Special Forces soldiers recoiled hard when they were told Kris was the new commander of the remote field base.

  More than once, Kris heard soldiers mockingly refer to Camp Carson as Camp Cocklover. Or to himself as Major Fag. The Special Forces, notoriously tight-knit and cultish, excluded David from their fraternity with a pathological virulence.

  Darren, his deputy, had come from the Special Forces world, and he straddled the gulf between the CIA and the military. Darren showed up and he did his job, and he never acted anything less than professional to Kris’s face, but his best friends were the loudest of the operators who sneered and joked in the mess hall.

  After Salim and Suleyman’s deaths, Kris’s eavesdropping nets spread wide across the northwestern Pakistan frontier, stretching from the Afghanistan border with Central Asia to almost the heart of Pakistan. The world’s best and most sophisticated technology pointed at the globe’s most backwater and underdeveloped regions. Drones hovered over every ancient village, every dirt path, every huddle of goats. Computers at the NSA and at Langley hummed, ripping through trunk phone lines, scanning bytes of data passing over the internet, and poring through captured phone conversations vacuumed up by the technology of the most powerful nation on earth.

  It was awe-inspiring, how much power they wielded.

  The hunt for al-Qaeda’s senior leadership usually progressed at a fixed pace. The computers chewed data. Analysts reviewed intelligence. Kris directed their gazes and analysis, focused his team to zero in on certain areas, expand other lines of intelligence gathering. He was in charge of both the drone program and the human intelligence program, managing an army of informants from Pakistan and Afghanistan who traded bits of information, sightings, and rumors for handouts of cash and parcels of food.

  But everything came to a screeching halt with one word, vacuumed up over a war-ravaged Pakistan province infested with al-Qaeda and Taliban warlords in the heart of a brittle no-man’s-land of terrorism and virulent anti-Western hatred.

  Nawawiun.

  Nuclear.

  The flash cable came in from Langley: al-Qaeda intercepts in Waziristan Province had captured the phone conversation of two senior commanders debating the Islamic merits of using nuclear devices. The original intercept, translated Arabic, was beneath the summary. Kris read it four times.

  Nawawiun. Nuclear.

  Kris’s phone blew up seconds later, Ryan phoning from Kabul at the same time an analyst from Langley tried to get through. He answered Ryan.

  “Have you seen the newest cable?”

  “I have it in my hands.”

  “This is a fucking nightmare. If al-Qaeda gets their hands on a nuke, that’s a fucking disaster. It’s what they’ve always wanted. Always.”

  “Where could they have gotten one, though?”

  “Pakistan. Old Soviet weapons that have gotten misplaced. There are more than a few very plausible options for how they could have gotten their hands on a nuclear device.”

  “We haven’t authenticated this report beyond just a single intercept. We need to know more.”

  “You’re telling me.” Ryan snorted. “You need to get your people out there, now. You’re the most forward base, and this threat is coming from your territory.”

  “I’ll redirect my people. See what we can find out from our sources on the ground. I can move more drones over Waziristan, but the DOD is going to start complaining about the reallocation.”

  “I’ll handle DOD. You just find out what’s going on in Waziristan, before al-Qaeda detonates a nuke and we’re looking at the real Apocalypse.”

  The intel came in like an ocean wave, crashing against Camp Carson.

  Another intercept, a few days later: three al-Qaeda members talking about a Shura council meeting they had attended where the topic of debate was whether using nawawiun devices was Islamic. Was such a device considered something lawful in the eyes of Allah? Or were nuclear devices harmful to creation, to Allah’s will?

  Shura council meetings were called when al-Qaeda decision-makers needed to find consensus on an action and needed Islamic cover for their choices in combat. Bin Laden had called such a meeting to discuss the September 11 attacks. The Shura had ultimately rejected his proposal, saying the attacks were un-Islamic.

  Bin Laden proceeded anyway.

  Saqqaf, in Iraq, hadn’t bothered with a Shura council. He’d forged ahead, dedicated to his own death cult, his bloodthirsty, apocalyptic vision of jihad as a cleansing fire of wrath that would sweep the world. Only a scattered handful of extreme imams had ever signed on to Saqqaf’s vision of Islam. Every major and established religious authority across multiple sects of the faith had denounced him.

  What did it mean that a new Shura council was debating the use of nawawiun devices? Shura councils were not called for high-
minded ideas or what-if scenarios; they were the faithful’s most devout form of democracy: what did the people think of a leader’s proposed action, and how did such actions line up with Allah’s will for humanity?

  The possibility that this nuclear threat was real, and imminent, shot higher.

  Director Edwards held a conference call with Kris and Ryan, going over every minute detail of both intercepts. What did this word mean in Arabic, in all its permutations? What had human sources said in the past few days? Had there been anything to corroborate the reports?

  David and another CIA SAD officer headed out to Waziristan for three days, posing as out-of-work farmers searching for any employment they could find. David came back filthy and covered in shit—he’d found a job making mudbricks out of fresh cow dung—but with ominous rumors and street chatter as well.

  Something big was coming, the word on the street said. Something not even the Great Satan could withstand. Something not even they could stop.

  Kris formally recommended Director Edwards ask to increase the threat level for the homeland. “This is the most serious threat al-Qaeda has presented since before September eleventh, Director. What they’re saying, how they’re acting. This is serious. Deadly serious.”

  “Kris, if you think this is that serious, then I’ll take your recommendation straight to the president. Promise me, Kris. We’re going to find out what the hell is going on over there and stop whatever it is they’re planning.”

  “I promise.” His vow, seven years old, echoed, a ripple extending forward through time. He would never let harm come to the homeland again, not because of him. Not because of what he did or didn’t do. “I swear.”

  His phone rang in the middle of the night.

  Kris was still awake, reading daily cables and reports from his analysts, trying to find a morsel of intel to exploit or expand on. David lay facedown on his lap, face burrowed into his belly. They’d made love and David had passed out, exhausted to the bone with his near-daily treks across the border and back.

  His phone buzzed on the nightstand, clattering across the cheap laminate and skittering away from his grasp.

  The country code showed Jordan. He didn’t recognize the number. “Hello?”

  “Mr. Caldera.” The deep voice, sounding almost as tired and worn through as Kris felt, belonged to Ahmad, one of the Mukhabarat agents Jordan had sent to Iraq to help with the hunt for Saqqaf. “We need to talk.”

  “What about?”

  “I’m going to send you an email. It has a video clip attached. After you watch it, call me back.” Ahmad hung up.

  Kris pursed his lips and waited. A minute later, his phone vibrated again, an incoming email. Watch this, the subject line read.

  He clicked the video file.

  It was grainy, the shadows too dark and the lights too bright. Men in robes and turbans moved around a crowded room, a mudbrick hut with open holes for windows. Rifles were propped against walls. The men sat on dusty carpets in a circle. The video zoomed out, panned slightly. Refocused. It was obviously shot from something small, something handheld. Something concealed. A bit of robe fell over the lens before being brushed away—

  And revealing the aged face of al-Qaeda’s number two, Ayman Al-Zawahiri.

  Kris stopped breathing. His eyes widened, until he felt like his eyeballs would fall from his skull.

  Zawahiri spoke, but the audio was distorted. Kris had to rewind and re-watch a half dozen times. “Brothers,” Zawahiri said. “The Sheikh, Allah bless him, sends his love. He has asked that we discuss a most urgent topic today. We must discuss the nuclear devices. Does Allah declare the nawawiun a proper weapon of war?”

  The video cut out abruptly.

  The Sheikh. Osama Bin Laden. Nawawiun, nuclear. The devices. Nawawiun devices. Nuclear devices. A new plan of Osama Bin Laden’s, and somehow, al-Qaeda had managed to get their hands on nuclear material.

  Kris called Ahmad back. “How did you get this?”

  “We have a mole. Someone we turned in Jordan and sent to Afghanistan. He’s worked his way up, and he emailed us that file a few days ago.”

  “Tell me everything.”

  “His name is Hamid, and the Jordanians picked him up when he was agitating for Saqqaf online. Posting in jihadist chat rooms and advocating violence against the West. Raising funds to send to Saqqaf. They traced his ISP and plucked him out of his Amman home. He wasn’t who you’d expect. Married, father to three boys. A doctor. He tried to volunteer to travel to Iraq to help as a doctor, but never took the final step.”

  Kris led the top-level intelligence briefing from the command center at Camp Carson. On the main monitor in his secured conference room, George and Director Edwards, back at Langley, and Ryan in Kabul, each filled a corner of the screen. The president’s national security advisor and chief of staff were also on the call, scowling into the cameras from the Situation Room.

  “Is he a coward?” Ryan glared across cyberspace. “Willing to talk the talk but not walk the walk?”

  “He turned on his old jihadi brothers in Amman at the fingernail factory.” The grim nickname for Jordan’s intelligence headquarters. “He begged for the chance to make things right. The Jordanians told him the only way they’d wipe his record clean was for him to start working for them. They gave him a thousand bucks and told him to go to Afghanistan, pose as a doctor looking to support the jihad. They wanted him to identify threats against Jordan or any potential jihadist returnees to their country.”

  “Sounds like a giant gamble.” Director Edwards frowned.

  “They didn’t really care much whether he lived or died. If he bit the dust, they were out a thousand dollars. If he came through with intel, great. He fell off the map for two years, after he sent an email from Peshawar. Said he was linking up with some fighters and making his way into Afghanistan, but that he was going to be offline for some time. That people would be watching him. Said he’d be in contact when he could. After six months, the Jordanians closed his file and declared him dead. There were tons of drone strikes in that region. They assumed he’d been hit.”

  “What the fuck has he been doing for two years in Afghanistan?” The chief of staff glowered at the camera, his dark eyes picking Kris apart, even from ten thousand miles away. “I don’t buy it. He disappears into the badlands, and then comes back with this video?”

  “Our analysts have authenticated it.” Director Edwards spoke before Kris could.

  “Zawahiri hasn’t been seen since 2002. Not by anyone outside of al-Qaeda or from the West. There have been zero sightings. Getting him on video, like this, is huge. It just doesn’t happen. What has Hamid been doing for two years? Working his way up the ranks, most likely. Until he got something he knew we’d want. And don’t forget the reward for either Bin Laden or Zawahiri. Twenty-five million buys a whole new life,” Kris said.

  “To be clear, the Jordanians have been running him, yes? No American intelligence officer has met this agent? There’s no American assessment of his reliability?” The national security advisor jumped in.

  “No, sir. Not yet. The Jordanians have said they believe he’s reliable. Apparently before sending him to Afghanistan, his handler built a rapport with him. Made him see the light. Hamid was begging for a chance to redeem himself, they say.” Kris took a deep breath. “Our plan is to meet with Hamid personally. We do need to get an American assessment of his abilities, his access, and yes, his reliability. Ahmad, his Jordanian handler is flying out. We’re working on contacting Hamid and arranging a meeting time and location. We want forty-eight hours with him for a full debrief.”

  “Is there a possibility that the video is a fake?”

  “No, sir. The analysts at Langley authenticated it.”

  “Could he have stumbled on old video?” the chief of staff asked. “Maybe it’s something that he found somewhere and is passing off as his own intelligence?”

  Kris shook his head. “I highly doubt that. We have current intercepts th
at reference the conversation Zawahiri is having with his Shura council. Wherever this video comes from, it’s recent. Very recent. And it refers to a threat we have to take extremely seriously. Al-Qaeda may be in possession of a nuclear device, and they are currently debating how to use it.”

  The chief of staff and national security advisor sat back. They glanced at each other, then at Director Edwards. “What’s the CIA’s recommendation if this Hamid ends up being legitimate?”

  “We track him. We put an active tracker on him and follow him around the clock. He’ll give us a signal when he’s back with Zawahiri, or if he’s taken higher. He’s a doctor, and there aren’t many of them in al-Qaeda. Both Zawahiri and Bin Laden are in poor health. We’ve always wanted to pursue the health angle and try to insert some kind of medical personnel into the movement. This is exactly what we’ve wanted.” Director Edwards smiled at Kris, over the screen. “Bin Laden is hiding in a cave somewhere, marginalized. He’s a symbol. But Zawahiri is operational. When the next attack comes, it’s coming from him. This may be the big break we’ve all been dreaming of.”

  “A real double agent inside al-Qaeda.” The chief of staff finally cracked a tiny smile. “Don’t put the champagne on ice just yet, but…” He nodded to them all. “Fucking well done.”

  Ahmad arrived at Camp Carson two days later. He hugged Kris and shook David’s hand, both his eyebrows rising when he found out they were married and quartered together. “I didn’t realize, in Iraq—”

  “We kept it quiet. But we’ve been together for years.”

  Ahmad nodded. He smiled at them both. “To find happiness in these days is a great and beautiful thing. Alhamdulillah.”